


Better Seen from a Distance

by Jadesfire



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: #summer2013, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadesfire/pseuds/Jadesfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of the battle of New York, Clint comes face to face with Loki, his team and his own grief.</p>
<p>~</p>
<p>In Budapest, Clint and Natasha work their first mission together, and find that things are never quite what they seem</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Seen from a Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a pinch-hit for Avengers Reverse Big Bang 2013, for the Mix _Catch me when I fall_ by Crescent_Gaia, which can be found [here](http://crescentfanfic.livejournal.com/37899.html).
> 
> This was such a pleasure to write, and huge thanks to crescent_gaia for letting me follow my instincts with this story, and get my first Avengers fic under my belt. The mix was incredibly inspiring, and I hope I've managed to catch something of its mood in the story. She also made the lovely banner at the top of the fic, so be sure to click through!
> 
> Contains spoilers for the Avengers movie. Also references to _Thor_. The Budapest parts are set some years before the events of _Iron Man_.

 

[ ](http://crescentfanfic.livejournal.com/37899.html)

 

  
_Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak._  
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

_** Budapest, Hungary ** _

The clue was the way the air shimmered around the guys with guns, and if Clint hadn't seen it twice already, he would have put it down to being clocked on the head one time too many.. As it was, he closed his eyes, slowing his breathing enough to hear beyond his own heartbeat. His eyes couldn't be trusted; he had no idea yet about his ears. On his precarious perch above the main cavern, the sounds echoed strangely, bouncing off all the walls before reaching him. It was less confusing than trying to look, but only just. His patience was getting stretched thin, which was saying something. Normally, waiting on a high ledge to shoot something wasn't a problem, and he'd once spent two days in a fake air-conditioning unit waiting for his shot. This, though. This was starting to make him angry, and that was going to make him careless.

Breathing in through his nose, he forced back the impatience, letting his brain process the sounds from below without his conscious interference, as though he was lining up a shot with his ears rather than his eyes. This was something he could do, an instinctive state of mind where everything fell into place between one breath and the next, ready and waiting for him.

Someone below dropped something, the sound echoing crazily and jarring Clint enough to make him open his eyes again. He had just enough presence of mind not to look down, turning his gaze upwards instead, where the faint light from the deeper caves was highlighting the stalactites. It didn't really help, his brain trying to compensate and his instincts making him want to look down, and the sound still seeming to bounce off the inside of his skull.

Great. Now he was going to have a headache for the rest of the night on top of everything else. He shut his eyes and tipped his head back against the wall behind him, trying for calm, and mostly achieving grudging patience.

After a moment, the cavern fell silent again, and Clint risked glancing down, fixing his eyes on the wall opposite, and checking his peripheral vision for any movement. Carefully, he put a hand out, finding the edge of the ledge by touch and shifting towards it, looking down into the cavern below. He blinked a few times, even though he knew his eyes were already adjusted to the dark. Blinking reminded him that he was using his eyes, that he was seeing something, and that he was not, under any circumstances, to try to shoot it. Which sucked.

He shut his eyes again, moving back towards the cave wall and feeling his way back towards his exit. This was really not going to work.

 

~

The little apartment was clean at least, and while it wasn't exactly luxurious, nor was quite a safe house, it at least had all Clint needed for now. He stowed his bow in the case by the bed, checked the pistol under the pillow again, and pulled his laptop out from underneath the mattress. It wasn't exactly a secure hiding place, but it was enough against a cursory search, and if this place was compromised, he was going to have much bigger problems than losing his computer. Right now, his biggest problems were frustration and general impatience, but rules were rules, and if he missed his check-in, he didn't think saying he was too cranky to talk was going to cut it.

Sighing, he took it over to the tiny desk in the window and opened it, waiting for it to boot up. While he waited, he gave into the urge to drop his head to the desk, hitting it gently a couple of times before just letting it rest there. With his eyes closed, he could pretend this was just a normal, standard mission and that his brain didn't feel as though it was being tied in knots every night. It had been four days already. If this went on much longer, he was going to need a long vacation somewhere with a shooting range to put himself back together again.

_"I see you took the time to get a haircut,"_ his computer said, making Clint jump a little, banging his head against the table again.

"Ow." He sat up and glared at Coulson, who was watching him with benign amusement. "Thanks for that, sir."

_"Sleeping on the job?"_

"I wish. One day, you're going to send me on daytime ops."

_"And mess with your screwed up circadian rhythm? That would just be irresponsible."_ For his part, Coulson didn't look like he'd been getting much by the way of sleep either. _"Report?"_

Clint shrugged, leaning back in his chair enough to prop his feet up on the table. "Second verse, same as the first. I can get in, I can see where they're going, but as soon as I hit that barrier..." He shook his head. "I'm all for shoot first, ask questions if it survives. Thing is, normally I like to know that the thing I'm shooting at is real."

_"You're sure it's not."_

"Not unless the caves of Budapest really are protected by dragons, sir."

There was a long silence. To be fair, it wasn't actually the most ridiculous thing either of them had heard, so Clint didn't blame Coulson for considering it.

_"Last night, you said it was a bear."_

"And the night before that, it was a giant snake. Look, unless they're building some kind of refuge for escaped fairy tale creatures down there, it's got to be an illusion."

_"You think?"_ The tone was dry as ever, but Clint could see the distraction in Coulson's eyes, could practically hear his brain working. _"What do you need?"_

"Back up. The direct approach isn't getting me anywhere. I need someone to work the other end, take on the people we know have to be behind this, but it's not exactly my area of expertise." He could do it, he just didn't like it, and didn't see the point if he didn't have to. "We're going to be better off if I play back up for an undercover specialist."

Clint had never been subtle. He didn't need to be with Coulson, and had never seen the point anyway.

On the screen, Coulson frowned. _"We've been over this."_

"So go over it again. With prejudice." Rubbing the back of his neck, Clint tried not to glare at Coulson. It wasn't actually his fault, technically, although Clint wasn't really clear on how much he was trying to help, either. "I need another pair of hands. Someone with undercover and infiltration expertise, and preferably someone who knows the Eastern European market. I can blend right up until the moment I open my mouth, which for what we need, isn't going to cut it because there's no way they're going to trust an American. Without that, I might as well pack up my bow and get on a plane, and you can send some other poor sap to shoot bullets into dragons."

_"Maybe I'll just play your little speech to the director and see what he says."_

"Fine by me."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Coulson apparently trying to read something in Clint's face. Eventually, he said, _"You really trust her?"_

"As much as I trust you, sir."

That got him a huff of what, for Coulson, was laughter. _"Let me see what I can do. I know medical keep asking for more time. Perhaps it would be as well to have them run field tests instead."_

"Before she snaps and stabs them to death with their own syringes?"

_"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."_ Coulson seemed to be checking something off-screen. _"Things should be wrapped up here soon, one way or another. Hopefully if we can reassure all the brass that there's enough in-field supervision, they'll release her."_

"Either that, or you'll just have to charm them into it," Clint said, grinning as Coulson gave him his flattest look. "That's the spirit, sir."

_"Get some sleep, Agent,"_ Coulson said. _"If we do this, we're going to be the ones taking the heat if it goes wrong."_

"I'll start on the infiltration plans in the morning. Later in the morning," Clint corrected. There was already light creeping across the sky, and he could feel the tiredness in the back of his brain. "Tell her I'll see her when she gets here."

_"Not if she sees you first."_ The dryness was back in Coulson's voice, which was probably a good sign. _"I'll let you know."_

Coulson cut the connection at his end before Clint could get to it.

"Always has to have the last word," he muttered, scrubbing at his face. He didn't mind working nights, not really, but three days in wasn't enough for his body clock to have properly adjusted yet, and the tiredness would get to him if he wasn't careful. Between that and the mission proving to be an exercise in frustration and fairy tales, he was wasting patience and concentration that he really didn't have. And even if Coulson came through with his back-up, it would take a couple of days. Time enough to get things set up, assuming he could get enough sleep to function properly.

After all, he told himself as he stowed the laptop away again and fell onto the bed, he was going to need to be on top of his game to keep up with Natasha.

 

~

** _Stark Tower, NYC_ **

The dust hasn't even settled. In the evening sun, Clint can see it hanging in the air, motes twisting to catch the light, and a general haze from too much destruction, too quickly. Two hours after all the Chitauri dropped to the ground like puppets with their strings cut, no one's even trying to pretend things are going back to normal.

It's Clint's turn to babysit, with Stark playing chaperone, possibly in case Clint does everyone a favour and put that arrow through Loki's eye socket after all. That's not going to happen any time soon, mostly because he's having trouble deciding on the right or left eye.

For his part, Stark is busy trying to get himself extracted from his battered armour, which apparently is harder than it looks. He's out on the windswept balcony, elbow deep in mechanical parts and keeping up some kind of running commentary. Either that, or he's talking to his computer, which seems to have no problem in answering back.

"He begged, you know, at the end."

Loki's voice is low, carrying in the silent space, and has the same compelling note that Clint has been trying to forget for the last six hours. It sends a cold shiver down his spine, enough to make him shift a little, stirring up more dust from the table he's perched on. He can see Loki out of the corner of his eye, enough to make sure he doesn't try to make a run for it, not enough that Clint actually has to look at him.

"He begged me to make it stop. Everyone does, you know, when they're in pain, when they're scared and suffering. They just want it to end."

The words wash over Clint, registering somewhere at the back of his brain, but leaving him unmoved. There has been a cold shell around his heart since the end of the battle, since the heat of fear and the fight died away and his mind filled with the dark fury that has settled around him ever since, a shield from the outside world so strong that he doesn't think even Loki can break into it now.

He keeps his gaze on the broken window, not seeing the broken city beyond, and trying not to hear Loki's voice.

"All men beg."

"He didn't."

The words are so sudden that for a moment, Clint wonders if he said them. Then he turns his head enough to see Stark, still wearing the bottom half of his armour, his arms and chest free now, coming into the room from the staircase behind the shattered bar. He's walking a little stiffly, the joints not quite moving properly, and still he's managing to put a little swagger in his step.

"Even I don't believe that, and after the giant space alligators and the portal to another dimension, I thought I'd believe anything," he says, negotiating the last few steps with obvious difficulty. "I tell you, after today, I'm quite prepared to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Which reminds me, Barton, you up for shawarma after we get His Craziness here locked away?"

Clint jolts at little at the sound of his name, turning stiffly to look at Stark. The man's eyes are fixed on his, and he's standing by the bar with his back to Loki, who is watching both of them from under the beginnings of a frown.

"Sure," Clint says, shrugging a little, although his right shoulder is killing him both from the fight and his fall. "Why not?"

"Excellent." Stark has a glass in his hand now, half full of what might be whisky, and he holds it up to the light before tutting and picking something out of it. He doesn't drink it, turning slowly on the spot instead, as though surveying the ruins of his penthouse. "You stabbed him in the back," he says, in the same easy, conversational tone as he finally turns to face Loki again, "but we know that the last thing he did was fire that crazy-ass gun of his, so I'm thinking that what actually happened was that after you tried, and failed, by the way, to get rid of your brother-" Stark pauses, lifting his drink, and Clint doesn't miss the way Loki flinches a little. "-something went down between you and Coulson that ended in him shooting you halfway through the Helicarrier. I saw the hole." Finally taking a sip of his drink, Stark pulls a face. "Too much dust," he complains, putting the glass down again. "Anyway, we can always review the security footage to see what happened. Do you have CCTV on Asgard?"

"And what do you think is going to happen when everyone sees the footage of what happened here?" Loki asks, gesturing to the window. "Do you think the city will thank you for all of this once the dust has settled? They will be looking for those to blame. Someone will have to pay for all the death and destruction, and I do not think I will be staying long enough for it to be me."

He's looking past Stark to Clint, his eyes shadowed and dark. It's shockingly familiar, looking right through him into his soul. Clint remembers being unable to look away, the pull of another mind against his, the surety of purpose that had come from having his will subsumed by another. He wants to be able to meet that gaze again, to hold it without caring, and make some kind of statement by staring Loki down.

He turns away, shifting again so he can pull his feet up, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees. The city is a devastated mess below them, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles of all kinds starting to creep through the rubble and wreckage. They'll want to make a start before night falls.

There's movement in the corner of his eye, Loki stirring then thinking better of it. Stark is at Clint's shoulder, also looking down at the city.

"Seriously," he says, and Clint can hear the forced lightness in his tone, "shawarma."

He and Natasha last had shawarma at a hole in the wall place in Beirut, although they'd had to shoot the guy behind the counter before they'd finished.

"Yeah," he says, dragging his eyes away from the window and looking at Stark, not looking at the shadows behind him. "Shawarma is good."

 

~

  
  
**_Budapest_ **

 

"You know, if you're just going to keep looking at me like that, I really don't think this is going to work." Leaning back on the bed, Clint put his hands behind his head and shrugged.

"A dragon."

"I'm just telling you what I saw."

"And what you saw was a dragon."

It was becoming difficult not to roll his eyes. "Whatever they're got, it's like nothing I've ever come across before. I trust my eyes. I have to. So if I say I saw a dragon, then I saw a dragon. I'm not saying there was a dragon actually there. It didn't even breathe fire."

That got him the twitch of a smile. Natasha leaned back as well, settling into the armchair in the corner of the room. "Well, if you'd told me that from the start, maybe I would have believed you."

"Thanks. Nice to know I have your confidence." He kept his voice light, but the flicker in her eyes making him press his lips together again.

"Clint," she began before he could interrupt her, but the computer got there first, Coulson's face appearing in the window in the corner of the screen.

_"Barton?"_

"Yes, sir." He hoped he didn't sound too relieved. "We're both present and correct. Well, present, anyway." Reaching out, he flipped the laptop on the nightstand all the way open, making the video link jump out to full size.

_"I'll take that for now. Romanoff, are you up to speed?"_

Natasha came over to sit on the bed as well, jabbing a finger into Clint's knee when he didn't move of the way and ignoring his yelp as she said, "Yes, sir. Apparently I should have brought the Grimm brothers as well."

"Very funny." Rubbing the nerves that she'd hit, Clint swung around to face the camera as well. "There's a club right on the river that looks like a good bet. Apparently I get to play wingman tonight."

_"But with your feet on the ground, I hope,"_ Coulson said. _"We need to wrap this up as fast as possible."_ There was a slight strain in Coulson's voice that Clint recognised.

"Pressure?" he asked, scratching his thumb across his hairline.

Coulson gave him a brisk nod. _"As ever. I'm getting nowhere fast here in Warsaw, so I'll join you in Budapest tomorrow._

Beside him, Clint could feel Natasha tense, just a little, obviously aware that she was missing something and just as obviously choosing to ignore it. He'd tell her afterwards.

"Let me have your flight number and I'll pick you up at the airport."

_"With your driving, I'm better off in a cab."_ But Coulson was looking away, and a second later, Clint's phone beeped. _"Don't push it tonight,"_ Coulson added. His glance took them both in, lingering on Natasha for a moment.

She nodded. "Understood."

"I'm going to take her up to the caves afterwards," Clint said. "See what she can see."

_"Sounds good. See you tomorrow."_ The connection went dark.

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. "You want to tell me what that was about?" she asked, mimicking his gesture from earlier with her own thumb. "You're not very subtle."

"Which is why you're the spy and I'm the sniper," he said. "When no one can see you, you don't have to be subtle. And it's nothing much. Sometimes you want to say things on comm lines that you don't want the brass to hear. Especially when you're talking about them." Clint brought his feet back up onto the bed, nudging Natasha a little. "He means there's someone trying to play politics further up the food chain. Probably wondering why this op isn't over already."

"Did you tell them about the dragon?" Her tone was dry, but she wasn't meeting his eye.

"All in my report. And you know that's not what it will be." If they were going to work together, they needed this open between them.

"It'll be about me," she said. She stood up, keeping her back to him as she went over to the window. "They don't want me in the field."

"I wanted you here." He wasn't going to sugar-coat it for her, and she wouldn't thank him for it anyway. "They can think whatever they want. It was my call, I made it, then and now."

"They must think a lot of you." Her head was tipped down a little as though looking into the street. He doubted she was seeing anything.

"Coulson backed me, and he knows where all the bodies are buried." He considered that for a moment. "Literally, in some cases. Anyway, like I said. My call." When she didn't respond, he added, "Don't make me regret it."

"Or what?" She was smiling a little now, he could tell, even though all he could see was the back of her head and the stiff set of her shoulders. "You barely hit me last time."

"That was a warning shot," he protested, spreading his hands when she turned to him, eyebrow raised. "You want to go another round, just call it."

"Maybe we'll try it on my turf next time," she said. She was leaning back against the window now, and he could see the smile properly, some of the stiffness gone from her posture. "Speaking of which, I need to get ready." Pushing herself upright, she snagged her bag on the way towards the bathroom.

Clint looked at the clock. "Clubs don't even open til midnight around here. You've got hours yet."

"And that is why I do the spying and you do the shooting," she said. "Watch and learn, Barton." The door swung shut behind her.

Clint stared at it for a long moment, some of the tension that had left her seeming to creep into him. He worked alone, or he worked with Coulson, that was how it went. The decision to bring her in, to let the headshot go, wasn't one he regretted, for all the post-op yelling. He'd known it was right, the way he knew how to compensate for wind, light and temperature in the field. And he knew, in the same way that he knew where the arrow was going to go as soon as he drew it, that this was going to work. It had to work.

Shaking his head to clear it, he made himself get up off the bed and pulled his own bag over. The first thing he had to do was figure out how to hide his arsenal in the gear that Natasha had sworn to him would be ideal for the club tonight. Eyeing the pants, he ruled out at least three of the guns, and half of the knives. This was going to be trickier than he'd thought.

 

~

_** Travel Lounge, Gatwick Airport, UK ** _

"Here."

Clint takes the cup that's thrust under his nose more out of habit than because he wants it, and he sets it down on the low table to let it cool. The smell of coffee is good, though, even if no one in this country makes it quite right. They're only here for a few hours; he'll probably survive.

Opposite Clint, his companion takes his own cup, smiling up at Natasha. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Natasha slides along the sofa, knee pressed to Clint's as she looks around. "We've got another two hours before the flight to Tromso."

Eric Selvig nods. He's fidgeting a little, but then has been since they left New York. In a strange kind of way, Natasha has been as well, her almost unnatural stillness on the flight and now as she hides behind her coffee cup are her own way of distracting herself, forcing the movement away rather than out.

His own hands are shaking right now, and the coffee will stay on the table until they stop.

"Have you been to Tromso before?" Selvig asks, and Natasha shakes her head.

"I visited Murmansk once, that's almost as far north," she says, adding, "It's a Russian port," when Selvig looks confused. "And I've been through Oslo a few times."

Selvig has done enough confidential work to know when to ask and when not to. He steers around the obvious questions, and asks instead, "What's Oslo like?"

They talk about the fjords for a while, since Selvig has been to Sweden a few times, and they compare Oslo to Stockholm, the different types of smoked salmon, eventually moving onto the differences between Swedish and Norwegian. Natasha, of course, speaks a little of both, although she claims her accent is terrible. Selvig has a working knowledge of Swedish that's probably more useful, and waves off her modesty.

"I find it hard to believe that you two do anything less than perfectly," he says, looking down into his coffee as though fascinated, and so he misses Natasha's knee bumping into Clint's. He doesn't react, because he thinks his hands are steady enough that he can pick up his coffee without spilling it.

The taste is awful, but it's hot, wet and contains caffeine, so he supposes it will do. Belatedly, he notices that Natasha brought food as well, a couple of plates with apparently random choices from the small buffet. Except there's plenty of sliced melon and no strawberries, because she knows he doesn't like them. All the pastries are plain, no chocolate or sugar, and the bread rolls have poppy seeds, not sesame. Nothing that she doesn't like, everything he prefers.

Abruptly, he gets to his feet, not looking at either of the others as he stalks over to the window, staring out at the planes. There's hardly anyone else in the lounge, and no one will think anything of it anyway. Who doesn't like to watch planes coming and going? That's what the giant windows are for.

There's no rubble on the apron, and the flashing lights on the airport trucks are yellow or orange, not blue and white. He makes himself see it, forces himself to calculate the best angles for visibility, where he'd put his perch if he had to watch this place for a while.

The light touch on his arm doesn't make him jump, Natasha's touch familiar and sure.

"I brought your coffee," she says, offering it to him.

"Thanks." It tastes just as bad as before, too bitter and too weak at the same, and he gulps it down in one go

"You should talk to him," Natasha says. "He's maybe the one person in the world who knows what you're going through right now."

In theory, she's right, of course. He shakes his head. "Not yet." He blinks a little, clearing his vision which had started to blur at the edges. From here, or the roof of this building, he'd have his pick of targets. At least a dozen, with the only tricky one being the pilot of the plane nearest him. Airplane glass is tough as hell, and it would depend whether or not he was allowed to blow the whole thing up. If he could do that, then there'd be a lot more than a dozen bodies on the ground.

"They'd have you with five minutes," Natasha says, her expression knowing when he glances at her. "They do think of these things, you know. SHIELD helps them."

"Depends how smart you are," he says, and gestures to the movable walkways that take people from the building to the plane. "Those things don't fold up tight all the way. If you were patient enough, careful enough it'd be a great spot. Did you know about the men in Stuttgart?"

She blinks, the only outward sign of surprise, and then nods. "Yes."

"That makes twenty-seven, not including-" But he can't say that yet, not when they're both still too close to it. He sees her flinch, just a little, supplying the last name for herself.

Looking away from him, she shrugs. "Can you do anything about it?"

"Red in my ledger. That's what you always say." They both say it, whenever they need the reminder, familiar words like some kind of mantra for their own brand of meditation. It's what she'd said on the Helicarrier, when he was still dazed and shaken and trying to work out what the hell he was supposed to do next. She hadn't had an answer for him then, apart from carrying on to the next fight, and he doubts she'll tell him anything different now.

She's looking up at him now, expression careful and not a little challenging. "And how do you plan to wipe it out?"

It's his turn to shrug, watching airport staff manoeuvre the walkway into place. "I could start by recommending some changes to that thing," he says.

"You could. And you could come back and talk to a man who thinks he's to blame for the destruction of New York city and the deaths of over a thousand people."

Between them, Clint doesn't actually know how many he and Natasha have got on their scorecard but he'd be surprised if it wasn't at least twice that. He glances over at Selvig, who is turning a teaspoon in his hands, apparently transfixed. He looks tired.

"I could do that," he says, and lets Natasha lead him back to the table.

 

~

_** Budapest, Hungary ** _

"I swear, Barton, you are the worst dancer I have ever met."

Under the streetlamps, Natasha's face was flushed, and she was grinning at him as she pulled him along, her fingers tangled with his.

"You just don't appreciate true talent when you see it," he said, using their joined hands to tug her close and wrapping one arm around her waist. There were other clubbers making their meandering way home, but they'd lost the last of them a few turns ago. Pressed together, he and Natasha made a slow circle, rocking from side to side as though having their last dance together in the pre-dawn glow. Her hair, a bright, unnatural scarlet, tangled in his fingers.

"Anything?" she asked, her voice not much more than a breath in his ear.

He shook his head. "We're clear."

"Agreed." She didn't pull away though, leaning her forehead against his shoulder for a moment before lifting her head to look at him. "Been a long time since I danced all night."

"You're good," he said. "Very energetic."

"Charmer."

They kept their hands linked as they strolled along the river. There didn't seem to be anyone tailing them, but that didn't mean they wouldn't run into anyone else out here, and Clint wanted to keep their cover as long as he could.

He kept his voice to a low murmur as he said, "Still up for having a look at the cave tonight?"

"Sure." Natasha glanced at the sky. "We'll need to make it quick, though. That took longer than expected."

"You got it?"

The look she gave him could have melted steel. "You didn't ask me here just to watch me dance."

"That's just a perk of the job." He skipped away a few steps as she swept a foot towards his knee, using his hold on her hand to swing her off-balance, just enough to make her miss. "And I'm just checking."

"I got it." Still glaring a little, she put a hand on the pocket of her very short shorts. "He likes me. We're having lunch tomorrow, although I suspect he's more interested in my contact book than me."

"That's quick work."

"I thought you wanted this wrapped up." There was a faint challenge in her voice that he let go for now.

"I do, I just didn't realise you were going to make me look bad by making it look so easy."

She grinned, her teeth flashing white in the half-light. "If you think wearing this outfit is easy, you should try it."

"It's not my colour." His own black vest and jeans let him pass as an average foreign tourist. Her white cropped top and cut-off shorts made her look like she belonged in that world of flashing lights and pulsing beats.

"And I'm not sure it would have had the same effect on Lantos." The grin faded into something altogether more sly. "Apparently lunch tomorrow is on him, at the best restaurant in town. I'm supposed to dress up, and there's a shop next to the club where he has an account I can use."

"A kept woman already. Whatever happened to not putting out until the second date?" They'd reached the bridge, the lights along it reflected in the water below, and when he looked at her, he saw the ghost of a frown on her face for a second, as though trying to remember something, before her expression cleared and she smiled.

"I guess I'm just that kind of girl."

It was strange. He'd known her for no time at all, hadn't even worked with her, not really, and he could already hear the undercurrent of uncertainty in her statement, as though testing whether it was the right response or not. Her English was flawless and her accent impeccable, but he wondered how much slang she'd had the chance to learn. When he turned to smile at her, there was a knowingness in her eyes, as though she knew that he'd picked up her uncertainty, and was daring him to call her on it.

Instead, he lifted their joined hands and placed a gentle kiss on the end of one of her fingers. "Don't do yourself down, baby, you're at least twice that kind of girl."

He probably deserved the elbow to the ribs for that.

 

~

The ledge was barely big enough to hold both of them, and Clint could feel it every time Natasha breathed, just from the tiniest movement of the shoulder that was pressed to his.

"This seems a bit excessive," she muttered, shifting a little.

"Trust me, the first time? I nearly fell right off the edge. No point taking chances." At Clint's insistence, they were far enough back on the ledge that the floor of the cavern was out of sight. "Ready?"

He couldn't actually see her roll her eyes, but he could interpret the silence just fine. "This isn't my first time, Barton."

"Maybe not, but I'm the best you've ever had," he said, grateful that crushed together as they were, she couldn't do more than nudge him a little.

"Is working with you always going to be like this?" She asked, moving forward without waiting for an answer and looking down into the cavern.

Clint had known when he asked for her that keeping up with Natasha was going to be hard work. It wasn't until he was slammed back into the rock behind him, head bouncing painfully and a crushing weight on his stomach that he really realised how fast she was. The movement hadn't been signposted at all, a single flow of movement from the edge of their perch back into him, swift and smooth. He could hear his own heartbeat suddenly loud in his ears, some of her panic transferring to him as she pressed against him, and he swallowed hard against the fear and the feeling that he was under attack. This wasn't her trying run, not really, not from the way she was trembling. He wasn't even sure she knew what she was doing.

He was sure of that assessment as he heard her fingers scrabble against the loose stones beneath them. There was something panicked about the sound, and in her suddenly loud breathing. Her body was tense against his, pressing back into him, although he couldn't tell if she was trying to protect him or just get away. His own fight and flight reflexes were trying to kick in, and either way, she was about three seconds from blowing their cover. Clint had seen enough of this sort of thing to know that she wouldn't be able to help herself.

With an effort, he forced himself not to fight her, instead wrapping an arm around her waist and twisting, bearing her down to the ground and falling on top of her, letting himself go limp. Dead weight was harder to shift, and he was fairly sure that if he started to wrestle with her, it was only going to make things worse.

"You're in Budapest," he said, his head dropping forwards to that his lips were next to her ear. She was squirming beneath him, probably trying to get her hands underneath her to throw him off. "It's Clint, remember? Clint Barton. I asked you to come here to help me, remember? Natasha?"

The sound of her name made her stop, body going rigid for a moment. Clint let himself tense up, just a little, not relaxing until she did. Her hair caught on his cheek as she nodded, and he carefully pulled his arm free, rolling to one side so she could shift out from under him. Neither of them could go very far in the tiny space, their legs still tangled together. He could feel her shaking.

"You with me?" He asked, unable to see her face in the dim light.

She nodded. "Sorry." Her voice was steady enough, a contrast to the trembling he could still feel. They sat in silence as it died away, as though she was somehow consciously controlling that reflex reaction. Hell, maybe she could, how would he know? There had certainly been something unnatural about the way she'd moved, so fast that she'd practically been a blur in the darkness. The hundred or so questions that were clamouring at the back of his mind were making a bid for freedom again, begging to be asked, and he pushed them back, putting a hand out and finding her shoulder. There was still a slight tremor on the inhale, but she seemed to have herself better under control now.

"I should look again."

Just when he thought he was starting to understand her, she went and said something like that. He shook his head. "Have you ever heard the one about the definition of an idiot?" he asked, going on when she didn't reply, "An idiot is someone who does the same thing twice, expecting a different result."

It was hard to tell in the darkness, but he thought she might be smiling.

"Maybe. But I'm ready for it this time." To his surprise, she stretched out a hand towards him, gripping tightly when he laced his fingers through hers. "I think we should try again."

"Great, so you take both of us down this time?" he grumbled, but he braced her as she pulled herself forwards, letting her fit her body against his and shuffling around so she could see over the edge again. He kept his own face turned away, just in case, shifting behind her until her back was to his chest again, and the hand that wasn't in hers slipped around her waist. She was still breathing a little too hard, and he was having to consciously take slow breaths of his own, keeping them both on an even keel. There had been something unsettling about her determination, and it was something he understood, the need to face down something that terrified you, whether it was a good idea or not.

They leaned forwards together, Clint keeping his eyes averted as Natasha stared down, because while he was willing to make some concessions to her need to do this, he also wasn't an idiot. The last thing they needed was both of them freaking out at the same time; neither of them would survive the fall. As she got closer to the edge, he could feel her breathing slow against his arm, the tension in her back and shoulders as she held herself together. Whether she saw the same thing again or not, he couldn't be sure, concentrating on the slight strain in his muscles as she leaned further over, and on keeping himself secure and steady. This close, he could smell something in her hair, even through the dark scarf that she'd wrapped it in, and he let himself focus on that, existing just in this moment, and ready to act when she needed it.

"That's enough," she whispered, letting him pull her away again. "There's nothing else to be learned here."

Despite her words, she rested against him for a moment, letting him hold her up as she took a couple of deep breaths. The zip of her jumpsuit dug into his forearm as she gradually relaxed, the wave of tension seeming to flow down her body and away.

"What did you see?" he asked, lips brushing her ear, although he didn't think that was what made her shiver.

She shook her head, running her fingers over the back of his hand, which he took as a signal to let her go. As she moved away, he squeezed her shoulder, tipping his head a little, which she must have correctly interpreted as a repeat of his question. Shaking her head again, she led the way back into the cave system, carefully not meeting his eyes until they were outside again and shedding the heavy black caving gear. There was a chill in the early morning air, and her bright red hair almost glowed in the dawn light.

"Natasha."

Still without looking at him, she carefully folded the scarf that had been wrapped around her hair. "Clint."

"You do know I'm not going to stop asking until you tell me, don't you?"

"Yes." Now that he could see her face, he could see the haunted look in her eyes, the tense line of her mouth. She stuffed the scarf into the bag and helped him shove it back into it's hiding place, pulling the trailing branches of a nearby bush over it. "Come on."

It wasn't so different to waiting for the perfect moment to take a shot, really. Conditions had to be exactly right, and there was no point forcing it. They walked through the deserted city streets, Clint just waiting, letting his shoulder bump against hers from time to time, letting her know he was there, and that he hadn't forgotten.

They were back on the bridge when he felt the mood shift, some of the tension back in her shoulders, the way her hand trailed along the balustrade. She slowed to a stop in the middle of the bridge, turning to look down into the water.

"Do you know Nietzsche?" she asked, making him blink.

"Not personally." The stone wall came up to the middle of his chest, and he lifted his folded arms up to rest on it. Below them, the water was a deep, dark blue.

"Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you."

He'd heard a version of the quote before, but the emptiness in Natasha's voice made him shiver. When he looked over, he saw an echo of it on her face, something distant and lost as she stared out over the river.

"What did you see?" he asked again, keeping his voice soft enough not to startle her.

She shook her head, just like before, and he thought that once again, she wasn't going to answer. Then she turned, her eyes meeting his at last, the look in them enough to make his jaw tense, his breath catching in his throat.

"The abyss," she said.

 

~

_** Tromsø, Norway ** _

Norway is sunnier than Clint expects, and he slips his shades on as they make their way through the airport. Selvig obviously isn't used to travelling law enforcement, raising his eyebrows as they're waved through security.

"I could get use to this," he says to Natasha, who smiles.

"It's easier than having to smuggle our guns in our suitcases."

If she was anyone else, a remark like that would get her detained, if not arrested. As it is, the Norwegian security mostly seem to want to get rid of them as soon as possible.

"Ever get the feeling you're making someone nervous?" Clint asks, raising an eyebrow at her from behind his shades.

"Yes, because you're going out of your way to look harmless and reassuring." Natasha's look takes in his red-tinted shades, armoured vest, combats and heavy boots. "Do you even know what incognito means?"

"I took the quiver off, didn't I? Besides, I leave the sneaky stuff to you and-" He cuts himself off, knowing that the hint of a wince on Natasha's face is a mirror of his own. "Sorry."

"Clint..."

He shakes off her hand, nodding instead towards Selvig, and striding away. "Come on," he says. "We're lousy babysitters."

The terminal isn't much really, just a warehouse with decent signage, and people both coming and going are wandering around the open space. Clint clocks a movement, tracking the dark head moving with purpose towards them, and turns towards it before he's really registered what he's doing. The woman comes to a sudden stop as his attention falls on her, giving Clint a moment to see her properly, a pretty face with intense, dark eyes, slender nose and curved bow of a mouth. Her eyes seem to darken a little as she looks at him, the flicker of fear that passes across them making him flinch behind his sunglasses; he's seen that look on too many people lately.

Then the moment is broken, Selvig cutting off Clint's line of sight as he pulls the woman into his arms.

"Jane."

"Eric."

Natasha comes up beside Clint, pushing a trolley piled high with boxes and briefcases.

"Next time," she says, leaning on the handle and running a hand through her hair, "the astrophysics department can use FedEx like the rest of us."

Grinning, because the day Natasha trusts anything of hers to a courier is the day hell freezes over, Clint tilts his head at teh laden trolley. "Is that everything?" At her nod, he nudges her out of the way, taking over the steering. "Better collect Doctor Foster and get going."

She gives him a sidelong look, relinquishing the luggage and moving away. Both Selvig and Foster smile at her, while Clint looks around for the SHIELD agents playing bodyguard, finding them by the terminal doors. They each give him a brief nod, eyes roaming from him to their charge to the rest of the airport. That's protocol, and it's good, especially if it means Clint gets to shove the trolley back into movement with fewer eyes on him.

And if the agents look at him oddly when he gets closer and raises an eyebrow in silent question, he chooses to see it as nothing more than locals with their noses understandably out of joint at having their territory invaded by Head OFfice. It's enough for him that they nod towards an anonymous black SUV parked right by the terminal, probably in a bus stop or something, because sometimes security is better than secrecy.

He's halfway through loading the bags by the time the others join him, one of the agents helping him with the heavier boxes, while the other ushers the scientists into the car. Natasha pauses with her hand on the door, not getting in until Clint glances up and nods. She bobs her own head in reply, pulling herself up and out of sight. It's a reflex, he knows, a routine that they won't break for anything.

As if noticing, the agent helping Clint grins at him and holds out a hand.

"Alvis Hakanson," he says. "It's Agent Barton, isn't it?"

"They didn't tell you?" Shaking the hand, making eye contact, even through his shades, it's all an effort. He's trying to smile and must more or less succeed, enough for Hakanson, anyway.

"Just said some senior agents. Honestly, we didn't think they'd have you and Agent Romanoff doing routine babysitting." He hesitates, as though considering. "I think everyone at the field office is going to want to shake your hand, sir."

"Clint's fine. Or Agent. No need for the 'sirs'." Unable to look at Hakanson's smile any longer, Clint throws the last bag into the back and slams the door shut. "You'd better warn the folks at the field office that if they all try to shake Natasha's hand, someone's going to end up in Medical before the day is out." He doesn't need to look at him properly to see Hakanson's fallen expression, and it's easy to ignore if he keeps it in the corner of his eye. "Mind if I ride shotgun?" he asks, moving past the puzzled agent and clapping him on the shoulder, hoping the gesture seems less hurried than he feels. "Good man."

There's a muffled discussion from behind him as he settles into the passenger seat. Mostly, it's Selvig and Foster talking in low voices, while Clint is fairly sure he can feel Natasha's eyes boring into the back of his head. She'll save the argument for somewhere private, assuming his brain doesn't boil from the heat of her stare before that.

The discussion between Hakanson and the driver is conducted mostly in silent nods and knowing looks, until Hakanson climbs into the back at last. The slam of the door makes Clint jump a little, but he settles back into his seat, keeping his eyes on the road.

It's not a long journey, even if the tension in the air makes it seem longer. When they arrive, Clint keeps his seat while the others get out, his eyes still fixed unseeingly ahead. The observatory is on a hill across the water from the island itself, giving the parking lot a great view of the bridge and the city beyond. He's always looked at places differently to everyone else, seeing cover and blind spots, able to calculate distances and angles where other people see homes and landmarks. He's able to see how a place could be brought to its knees, the bottlenecks, the pinch points where an invading force could corral the population, the shooting galleries, the corners where the bodies would pile up. Tromsø is a small place, with wide streets and open squares. It would be hard to block enough roads to properly trap any escaping civilians, but they'd be fish in a barrel for anyone on the rooftops. With enough ammunition, he could pick off a couple of dozen a minute, easy.

A knock on the window brings him back to himself, and Clint starts violently enough to knock his sunglasses off. Outside, the agent who'd driven raises an eyebrow at him expectantly, stepping back as Clint opens the door.

"Agent Barton?"

"Sorry," Clint says, waving the man off and settling his shades back in place. "I was miles away."

 

~

_** Budapest, Hungary ** _

It had been a grey day, the sun never quite managing to break through the cloud cover, and an occasional drizzle working its way into everything, including the back of Clint's neck. He swiped at it again, sighing, and kept his eyes on the airport doors. When he eventually saw Coulson, suit only a little rumpled from his flight, Clint waved once, and then he got into the car, starting the engine. Neither of them would want to hang around.

Clint pulled out of the parking space as soon as the car door closed.

"Good flight, sir?"

"Short." Coulson sounded tired, and when Clint glanced over, he saw the other man leaning back in his seat, eyes half-closed as he watched the road. "Where are we up to?"

"Natasha's having lunch with a guy, then going on to the club tonight. I said we'd meet her at the apartment." He didn't have to be able to see Coulson's face to know the expression on it. "It's just lunch. She doesn't need back up for lunch. Nothing will happen until later." The look she'd given him when he'd offered to accompany her, just to lurk and just in case, could have boiled water.

"Well, when she doesn't get there because someone murdered her in the meantime, I'll be sure and put that in the report."

"Lets be honest, sir, you're more likely to be writing the 'where we hid the bodies of the people who tried to murder her' report."

"No, I won't, because I'll make you write that one. And dig the holes." Coulson has his head tipped back against the headrest, his eyes all the way shut now. "Did you find out more about what she saw?"

"No. But I haven't given up trying. She'll crack eventually." Sensing as much as seeing Coulson's sceptical expression, Clint grinned. "Come on, it worked on her before, didn't it?"

"Are you planning on shooting her again?"

Clint snorted. "Not now she can see me coming."

"Then I fear we may have exhausted your arsenal of persuasion. I'll talk to her." There was a finality in the statement, enough that Clint didn't argue, however much he wanted to. Coulson would find out for himself just how well that was likely to work.

Instead, he asked, "Do we know what they're shipping yet?"

"Not really. Sources, and the bodies on the ground in Poland, say weapons. But could be anything from handguns to rocket launchers."

"You don't think it's something so boring though, do you?"

"I think you don't use what's probably an alien security system to protect a few pistols. If it wasn't for that, this wouldn't even be a SHIELD matter."

"Stark Industries come through with anything?"

"Only that they're sure it's nothing of theirs, which is mildly comforting." Off Clint's look, Coulson added, "Rumour has it that Stark is working on something game-changing. Given the weapons he already supplies are years ahead of what we can make for ourselves, I do not want anything he can make getting into anyone else's hands. Anyway," Coulson scrubbed a hand over his face, "Stane seemed pretty definite about it, and Fury doesn't think he's lying about that."

They left the list of all the things Stane could be lying about unsaid.

Clint shook his head."How bad is it?"

"The only good news seems to be that the gangs getting these things are targeting each other, so we're not looking at a 'take over the world' scenario."

"Well, we did have one of those last month, so were not due another for three weeks at least."

Ignoring him as usual, Coulson said, "But civilians are getting caught in the crossfire. Not to mention the consequences of letting criminal gangs get hold of apparently impenetrable security."

"Yeah, that bit's not good." Clint pulled into an empty parking space and killed the engine. "We'll get them, sir. If anyone can get inside, it's Natasha, and she's halfway there already."

"Let's hope so. Still, I would have liked to have given her more time."

"What do you mean?"

Coulson opened his eyes at last, staring out into the empty street. "A big shipment left Volgograd yesterday, heading for Taganrog before they put it on planes for Budapest, Prague, Belgrade and who knows where else. We can track the transport, we can track the boxes, but we can't get near them, and we don't have enough for local law enforcement because their protection hasn't been beaten yet." Where it could, SHIELD liked to work within the local laws, the only problem being, the local law makers tended to dislike taking their cue from a shadowy international organisation. Red tape was a killer, possibly literally in this case.

Clint grimaced. "When will it get here?"

"Tomorrow, maybe the day after. We're trying to hold it up in Taganrog, but the Russians can be stubborn about that sort of thing."

"Speaking of stubborn Russians..." Clint nodded down the street, where he could just about see a distinctive red head behind the parked cars.

As they got out of the car, Coulson watched Natasha open the door to the apartment, and then turned to Clint, one eyebrow raised.

"That's quite the look for someone working undercover."

Besides the scarlet hair, Natasha was wearing a dress that looked as though it had been painted on, a short wrap in some kind of shaggy fabric that shook and shimmered as she moved, and heels that made her almost a inch taller than Clint. Just walking in them probably required some kind of qualification.

He shrugged. "She tells me it's necessary, and I'm not going to argue. I have a feeling that those heels are actually part of her arsenal, and it'll be a cold day in hell before I ask her where she keeps her gun in that outfit. But you take it up with her if you want to. Sir," he added, just for effect.

Coulson's lips twitched at the corners, the equivalent of a broad grin. "I'll consider it, Agent. Come on, let's see if she's got anything for us."

Halfway across the street, Clint put a hand on Coulson's arm, making the other man glance down and up again, questioning.

"Go easy on her about what she saw down in the caves," Clint said, his voice low. "Whatever it was, it freaked her the hell out, enough to lose it for a moment. And I don't think Natasha likes losing control."

"While we're the easy-going, take life as it comes types." Despite the sarcasm, Coulson nodded, letting his arm fall away from Clint's hand. "Noted, thanks."

He led the way inside, and Clint watched the back of his head as they climbed the stairs, still not entirely sure that Coulson was ready for this. Because while Coulson played things close to the chest, Clint had a feeling that Natasha didn't even let you know the game was on until she'd won.

~

While not without its amusement value, after ten minutes, Clint was getting tired of watching Coulson and Natasha circle each other like a pair of wary cats. Every time Coulson tried to pin her down on what exactly she'd seen in the caves, she slipped away with another non-answer, her eyes clouding over. Clint was fairly sure it was a distraction tactic, and it was working, making Coulson would back off a little, giving her space, until they started the whole dance all over again. They were both pretty good, there was no denying it, and since neither of them seemed inclined to back down anytime soon, they could be there for a while if they kept this up.

"Perception filters are extremely hard to describe," Natasha was saying from her perch on the end of the bed, her fingers curling into the mattress. "And this one was powerful."

"You've encountered them before?" Coulson had laid claim to the only decent chair in the room, laying his files out on the desk and watching Natasha from an expressionless face.

"I'm familiar with technologies that can change what your mind thinks your eyes are seeing, yes."

Clint groaned, throwing his arms out and falling back into the depths of the ratty armchair. "Oh for the love of God, I'm going to die of old age before you two get tired of this, aren't I?" He closed his eyes, knowing that two identical, irritated glares were being sent in his direction. "Tasha, he's not trying to trick you, he just wants to know if it's something he needs to worry about. Coulson, nothing short of a direct order is going to get you what you're asking for, so stop trying to be cunning about it. Both of you, it's not working, so either get it over with or give it up."

When neither of them answered, Clint cracked one eye open enough to see them turned away from him, locking eyes with each other in some kind of silent conversation that he couldn't quite follow. After a moment, Coulson nodded, picking a file up from the desk, and Natasha curled her legs up onto the bed, one hand rubbing absently at a spot on her calf as though it was itching. Clint wondered if she still had a scar there.

"Do you have an infiltration plan for tonight?" Coulson asked her, not even trying to cover up the change of subject.

Natasha nodded briskly, just once. "I know just enough about the local scene to make him think I'm connected, so he's trying to impress me, keeps talking about how much money he's got, how much power." She shrugged. "Men like him are simple enough to deal with. Make them think that you can help them make their next deal, and they're all over you. I've dropped hints that my father is a big deal in Ukraine." She smiled, just a little. "He's a big fish in this little pond, that's for sure, but I don't have the impression he knows much beyond this patch. Some of the names he dropped were completely out of context, drug runners or money launderers, but we're pretty sure this thing is arms dealing?" She made it a question, and Coulson nodded.

"That's what the chatter says, and I've got enough people in the morgue with holes in their heads to confirm it."

"Then he's definitely just throwing around names of people he's heard of, not people he actually knows. Men like that are careless, sloppy. If he thinks he can get some kind of trophy girlfriend who also happens to know a guy who knows a guy?" She shrugged. "It's not exactly difficult. The real question is how long it will take his bosses to realise just how stupid he is and decide he needs replacing."

Neither Coulson nor Clint were going to ask just how much Natasha knew about the local criminal networks, or how she'd come by that knowledge. Hell, for all Clint knew, her father might actually have been a big deal in Ukraine. That was going to be a conversation for further down the line, and if Clint had noted it, then he was sure Coulson had as well.

"We're going to have to step things up." Passing her the file, Coulson tipped his head a little. "Do you think you can get him to let you inside tonight?"

Blinking a little, Natasha shook her head. "No, it's too soon. Tomorrow night, maybe. He asked a lot of questions over lunch, so I'm sure he was checking me out." Without even looking over, she snagged a pillow off the bed and threw it at Clint's head. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Barton."

Clint grinned and caught the pillow in mid-air. "Come on, you can't give a guy an opening like that and complain when he takes it," he said, watching as she carried on ignoring him, opening the file and glancing through it.

The look Coulson gave him was half-knowing, half-exasperated, and all annoyed. "The paperwork should support the story you gave him. It matches what you sent us, but if you need anything changing, just say so."

"This should do," she said, and gave Coulson a small, genuine smile. "It looks very thorough."

"We try." The smile Coulson gave her in return was just as gentle and knowing, and Clint pressed the pillow to his face, groaning again.

"If you two are going to have some kind of undercover mutual admiration society, could you just let me know when it's over?"

"And what's your plan for this evening, Barton? Please don't tell me you plan to join the party. I've seen you dance." Coulson asked. Even through the pillow, Clint could hear the dry amusement in his voice. When he lowered it, he saw Natasha duck her head, not quite in time to hide her smile.

Clint threw the pillow back at her, not at all surprised when she caught it without looking up. "Find a drink, find a high spot, play bodyguard again," he said. "Let Natasha do her thing, make sure no one shoots her while she does it. What about you, sir? Did you pack your clubbing outfit? I have to say, I would love to see you in-"

"SHIELD has a contact here who's willing to talk," Coulson said, cutting him off. "I'm not sure if he's got anything useful, but I've dealt with him before, and he'll see me again." There was a note of something hesitant in his voice that Clint couldn't quite place for a moment, until Natasha dragged her attention away from the file and frowned up at him.

"Sounds like you're the one who needs the bodyguard," she said.

Coulson didn't deny it, just tipped his head to the side a little. "Maybe. The contact's reliable, mostly, but the people he works with, not so much. If you're not going to be able to get anywhere this evening, then I could probably use the back up more than you can."

This time, Natasha's knowing look was directed at Clint, and he could read it easily. He nodded. "Okay, although I'm sensing that means I'm going to need something to keep me warm rather than cool. Rooftop?"

"Rooftop," Coulson agreed, throwing another file in his direction. "I hope the location meets your approval."

It did. The chosen bar was typical of Budapest with a small room inside and a large garden at the back. While that would normally heighten the risk of being overheard, Clint would be able to check the area easily enough, then settle down to keep an eye on things. He nodded.

"That looks fine. Though I am disappointed that I won't get to see Tasha dancing again."

"Such a gentleman," she said, rolling her eyes.

Clint wagged a finger at her. "And if something does start to go down, in the spy sense, you need to let me know right away. None of this wandering off on your own and leaving us guessing." He paused, considering. "Actually, if things start to go down in the other sense, let me know right away as well, because-"

This time, the pillow hit him square in the face.

 

~

  
_** Tromsø, Norway ** _

Under the circumstances, Jane Foster seems to be coping fairly well with not only being shipped out to a remote location for her own safety, but also being shipped back from said location with barely any notice. She needs forty-eight hours to wrap things up, because apparently the consulting work has turned out to be more interesting than expected, and then she's ready to go home again. She doesn't even bat an eyelid when Eric says that home is going to be transferred to Stark Tower in New York, just asks if she can pack her lab in New Mexico up herself, rather than having 'the men in black suits' do it. Last time, some things got broken in the transfer, and she doesn't want that happening again.

Clint, who's never really been attached to places personally, but knows most people are, is kind of impressed, although not enough to offer to help her pack up, or to go through all the equipment they brought with them. He'd only be in the way, anyway.

He's standing on the roof of the observatory, staring down at Tromsø again, watching the street lights come on in the growing dusk.

"Are you waiting for the show?"

He turns to see Foster at the top of the steps, smiling a little carefully as she looks at him.

"Show?"

Taking that for the invitation it is, she wraps her scarf more tightly around her shoulders and slowly makes her way over to him. "The Aurora Borealis. The Northern Lights? It's what a lot of people come up here to see."

"Oh." He shrugs. "Not really. I was looking down there, actually. Seems like a nice town."

"Probably. I haven't seen much of it."

They lean against the wall in companionable silence for a while, him looking down and Foster staring upwards. She can probably name all the stars.

"I am so angry with him right now," she says out of nowhere, her voice still soft. "And I'm furious at SHIELD, shipping me out like I'm some kind of helpless damsel in distress. I'd be even madder if this place wasn't so awesome."

"They couldn't have Loki use you as leverage," Clint says. He glances over at her. "Loki was thinking three steps ahead of everyone, and if he could have found a way to use you against Thor, he would have."

"I know." It's not really that cold up here yet, but she shivers anyway. "That's pretty much the only reason I'm going to forgive him for not even calling me while he was here." She laughs under breath. "Not even a text."

That makes Clint smile. "I don't think they gave him a cellphone. And it's not like Loki gave him the chance to stop and think, what with-" He breaks off, waving a hand when the words won't come. "Everything."

She nods, and he thinks it looks weary. "Eric told me. Well, most of it. I don't think I've ever seen him this tired."

Looking away, Clint fixes his eyes on the lights on the bridge below them, not able to give her an answer to that one. She and Selvig are close, so he's sure he'll have told her about the dreams. Not that he's told Clint about them, of course, but then, he doesn't have to. If they're anything like Clint's, he's not surprised Selvig is exhausted.

"How's he doing?" Clint asks instead, blinking to keep his eyes focussed.

Foster doesn't answer at first, although he hears her sigh. After a long moment, Clint makes himself look at her, her face pale in the dimming light. When she turns enough to look at him, her eyes are deep and dark. "He knows it wasn't his fault, but I don't think that really helps. There are some things you can't just walk away from and pretend they didn't happen. All you can do is wait, and hope that they look better with time and distance."

She holds his gaze, barely even blinking, until Clint wants to look away and finds he can't. There's no judgement in that steady stare, no pressure one way or another. She's not asking anything of him, and while there's sympathy there, it's not overwhelming him. Maybe if the rest of the world could start looking at him that way, Clint could believe that there's a way out of this after all, a way that doesn't involve begging the forgiveness of the entire human race, or spending the rest of his life trying to atone for events outside his control.

He's still looking at her when the light finally dies, and he can no longer see her eyes in the shadow across her face, so he jumps a little when she puts a hand on his arm. It's cold.

"We should go inside," she says with a gentle pressure against his skin. "They'll be wondering where we got to."

"I'll be there in a while," he says, nodding. "Think I might just stay out and see this light show of yours."

After a moment's hesitation, she squeezes him arm a little, then turns and heads back to the stairs. Clint leans on the wall that encircles the roof, resting his weight against the cool stone, and this time, he manages to lift his eyes from the sparkling light of the town below, up to the sky. He stares upwards for a long time, the cold seeping into his bare arms and down the back of his neck, a distraction from the permanent knot in his stomach and numbness in his mind.

When the lights start, his eyes are so tired that everything seems blurred, and he has to rub the heels of his hands against them to wake himself up again. Then he lets himself just look, the waves of green and yellow washing over the sky like spilled paint, staggeringly beautiful, more than he'd imagined. He realises that he'd been afraid of this, of watching something unknown come out of the sky, afraid that it would remind him of blasts of blue light, of wormholes and scores of alien ships sweeping across him. He'd been afraid that he'd never be able to look at the sky again without that memory coming back to him.

Carefully, he folds his arms on top of the wall and lowers his face into them, closing his eyes for a moment, before lifting his head again and resting his chin on his arms so he can watch. Maybe, if he can fix this in his memory instead, he'll be able to lift his eyes up once in a while in the future after all.

 

~

_** Budapest, Hungary ** _

"Coulson, if you wear another hole in this carpet, I'm going to lose my security deposit."

That distracted Coulson enough to make him glance down at the threadbare carpet he was pacing on. "You actually think anyone would notice?" he asked. Still, he only made one more circuit of the room, stopping by Clint and staring down at him until Clint took the hint and vacated the chair.

"You're acting like a newbie on his first op," Clint said. "She's done this before."

"Not for us, she hasn't." Coulson drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. "I'm assuming that the two of you agreed the usual signals?"

"Nope, I just let her go without even discussing it." Clint grinned. "Relax, would you? We went through it all. Twice. If she's having problems, she'll let us know."

"If she can."

It didn't take a genius to work out that Coulson was just being argumentative for the sake of it at this point. "It's not her fault your source turned out to be useless," Clint said, earning him a scowl. "I'm just saying. Don't take your grumpiness out on the rest of us."

"Grumpiness?" Okay, so Coulson still sounded annoyed, but his shoulders slumped a little. "I suppose we should have expected it."

"What, that the people with mind-altering tech at their disposal might have used it to alter the minds of the people they did deals with? Wow, who saw that coming?"

"You know, if you don't have anything useful to contribute, you could try just not contributing anything."

"Tried it. Didn't take to it." Clint leaned back on the bed, glancing at the clock. Two-thirty a.m.. If the previous night was anything to go by, the party would be in full swing. He smiled a little to himself, only partly regretting that he'd spent his evening making sure no one eavesdropped on Coulson's completely useless conversation. On the plus side, they could be sure that the source's cover was intact, ready for next time there was trouble out here. On the down side, Clint was missing seeing Natasha dance again.

Across the room, Coulson was still frowning at him, as though sensing that Clint might be having unprofessional thoughts. To be fair, he usually was, so it wasn't that much of a lucky guess on Coulson's part.

Still, there was something not quite right about that look. "What is it?"

Coulson shook his head. "This wasn't supposed to be an undercover operation. You were supposed to infiltrate the weapons cache, collect intel and evidence, then get out again. I put you up for this because I wanted someone who could fight their way out if they needed to, possibly against some highly advanced weaponry."

"And now you're running a full-blown operation with one agent under and another stopping you from wrecking the rental."

"And with a source who's suddenly gone strangely quiet." Coulson pinched the bridge of his nose. "Something's not right about this."

"Like I said, they've got mind-altering tech. You really think they're not going to use it?" As soon as he'd said it, a cold shiver passed down Clint's spine, like a lock clicking into place and trapping him in with his fears. The words hung in the silent room for a moment as he and Coulson stared at each other in horror. "Do you-"

"Call her."

Clint was already fishing in his pocket for his phone. "Idiots," he said, not sure who he was talking about. It rang three times, then four, and he put it on speaker so Coulson could hear. At the tenth ring, he hung up, his stomach churning.

"Does she have a field phone?" Coulson asked, leaning over so far that his forehead nearly bumped against Clint's.

Without replying, Clint hit the innocuous looking app that turned his regular cellphone into what SHIELD R&D had dubbed 'field phones', able to get a signal anywhere on the planet, and turn into a homing beacon if needed. It rang again, and Clint watched the screen, waiting for the tiny green phone symbol to turn into Natasha's face.

She didn't pick up.

Clint stared up at Coulson, who was so close that Clint could see himself reflected in the other man's eyes. "What she saw that night. I should have known." When Coulson frowned, Clint stepped back a little, giving himself some distance and trying to think. "I didn't see anything that scared me that badly. Don't get me wrong, I was freaked out, but not enough to have a panic attack."

"What are you talking about?"

Everything was fitting together far too well. The easy way Natasha had seemed to get close to the arms dealer. Her confidence that she could get what she needed. No undercover operation went that well, that quickly. They'd both been blinded by her reputation and confidence, and maybe a little too willing to believe in her superhuman abilities. He shook his head. "Whatever that thing is, it hit her way harder than it hit me. I don't care how much training she's had, something's got into her head before, and I'm betting it was something like this."

"She's susceptible." Coulson blew out a long breath. "You're right, we're idiots." He put one hand on the back of his neck, the other on the gun at his belt, both gestures unconscious and telling. "What now?"

The phone in his hand was still ringing, and Clint pushed his thumb into the disconnect button a little harder than necessary. "If she's got her phone, we can find her."

"And if she hasn't?"

Clint turned away, pulling his bow case and quiver out from under the bed. "Then we find her anyway."

 

~

_** Puente Antiguo, NM ** _

Clint read Coulson's report after the incident with the destroyer, but he's still not really ready for just how much of a one-horse town this place is. It takes him three goes to get the name memorised, the place feels so unreal. One main street, a bar, a few shops, and a whole lot of dust. Jane Foster's lab is at the top of the incline, looking down the road out of town and set back from it a little. After everything that's happened there in the last year, Clint isn't really surprised that none of the locals really pay attention to the caravan of black SUVs pulling up outside, and the small army of people in suits who get out.

"Jane!"

Clint has to step aside as a smaller woman in a plaid shirt comes barrelling out of the lab, more or less throwing herself at Foster, who makes a startled sound as she's thumped back into the side of the SUV.

"Darcy, I'm fine," she says, patting awkwardly at the other woman's hair. "Really, it's all fine."

Darcy - Lewis, Clint's memory supplies - pulls away and inspects Foster, as though trying to see whether or not she's lying. "You brought the men in black back with you," she says, her voice full of suspicion. "That can't be good."

"Honestly, Darcy, I swear, it's fine."

Catching sight of Natasha out of the corner of his eye, Clint turns to her, shrugging a little and getting a raised eyebrow in reply.

"I saw the news, I saw..." Darcy trails off, as if noticing the others for the first time. "Er..."

"Come on," Foster says, slipping her arm through Darcy's and pulling her away. "Come and see Eric."

"Eric?"

Since he doesn't seem to be needed for the happy reunion, Clint turns to the lab, where various SHIELD agents are already wrapping things in what looks like the thickest cotton wool Clint has ever seen. There are computers and monitors everywhere, and a lot of equipment that he can't identify, which he doesn't think is just because he's not an astrophysicist. From what he's read, Foster built a lot of this stuff herself, to do one job, and one job only: find the bifrost.

He can't begin to understand the physics of it, and just thinking about makes his head hurt, not just from the math. Standing in the bright sunlight, his mind is half a country away, in that quiet corner of Central Park, watching Loki from behind his sunglasses. It had been satisfying at the time, of course, but now, ten days later, he's finding it harder to be so relieved. Loki is gone, and all the people he killed are still dead.

"Hey." Unbothered by the heat, Natasha is still wearing her thick jeans and leather jacket, as much armour as his kevlar-enhanced vest. "I hear there's a good bar in town."

"Maybe later," he says, and manages a smile for her. "I think Foster's still a bit nervous that we're going to steal or break her stuff again."

Natasha nods, giving a passing agent her best threatening smile and making him slow down, just a little, with the spectrometer he's carrying. "Good point."

Babysitting isn't so bad, really. After a while, Darcy drifts over, more curious than nervous, and a little while after that, she shows him the best way to get up onto the roof. From there, he has a good view of the whole town, right from the chemist's to the paddock, which is where, in her words, 'everything went kablooey.' Having seen some of the pictures of the aftermath, Clint can't disagree with her assessment.

She leaves him there, saying that she has to pack, and he pinky swears for her that if anyone steals her iPod this time, he will put an arrow in their butt. It's easy, this back and forth, the words coming more easily than he thinks they should. What's hard is looking back at the town, remembering the post-mission report, and the look on Coulson's face after the debriefing. He'd been impressed with what Stark had done, for all his apparent annoyance at the man. But actually coming face to face with beings from another world? Fighting them, nearly being killed by them? That had blown even Coulson's mind.

"They got most of it cleaned up pretty quick." Eric Selvig sits down a little stiffly, carefully lowering his feet over the edge of the roof. "I think SHIELD helped with that."

"Not just us."

"Even so."

They watch in silence for a while as the first boxes are taken out to the SUVs, the equipment loaded with care under Natasha's supervision. She glances up at them, then away, gesturing for the next load to come.

"So Natasha thinks I should talk to you," Clint says, staring down at her. "About Loki." The name doesn't make him flinch like he thought it would. He has a vivid flash of blue-green eyes and a cruel smile that is gone almost as soon as it appears, but that's all.

Beside him, Selvig shifts a little. "She said something like that to me too."

"I was thinking, we could just sit up here for a while, maybe talk about the weather, the flights from Norway, that sort of thing."

"And tell her we talked about him?"

"Oh hell no. I can barely bluff her, and you shouldn't even try." Clint shrugs. "We can tell her we tried, that it didn't quite work, but we'll get points for the attempt."

"That could work."

The silence falls again, more contemplative this time, and Clint watches the anonymous agents in their anonymous suits deconstruct Jane Foster's life, ready to put it back together again.

"Does that sort of thing happen to you a lot?" Selvig asks after a while. "I mean, do they give you training, or something?"

"Nope. Normally if someone gets brainwashed, you know about it pretty quickly. Or you don't know at all. Ever. Anyway." Leaning back on his hands, Clint lifts his face to the sun, having to close his eyes against the glare even behind his shades. "People like Loki aren't exactly part of the standard training package. We're more used to bad guys who try to shoot you, and who stay down when you shoot them."

"Sounds simple."

"Everything's simple if you look at it the right way. Up here, packing up that lab, putting it boxes, then in the cars, then unpacking it at the other end, it looks pretty easy. But I can hear Doctor Foster yelling at people from time to time, and I think Darcy is sitting on her suitcase in case anyone tries to take it from her." He angles his head to the side, just able to see Selvig out of the corner of his eye. "Looked at overall, we've got nothing to be sorry for. Loki took over our minds, our wills. Anything we did is his fault."

"Then why can't I sleep?"

Clint closes his eyes. Oddly, the memory that keeps coming to him in his dreams isn't the people he killed, or the Helicarrier exploding before him. It's the moment on the bridge when Fury looked up at him, confusion and anger on his face in the moment before the second engine died. That silent, still moment when his boss - his friend - looked at him as though he'd never seen him before. While some of the details of his time under Loki's command are hazy, that one is bright and sharp, and although he's seen Fury since, has been accepted back into the fold without a mark against him, he still can't shake the feeling of being on the outside looking in. On the other hand, maybe that's just an occupational hazard.

When he opens his eyes again, Selvig is staring into the distance, although Clint knows he's not really seeing the town.

"I don't know why," he says, his voice rasping a little. "But I know I keep thinking it's going to be Coulson, every time I pick up my phone. And I think that he's going to be so pissed at me for beating myself up over things I couldn't do a damn thing about."

"And when it's not him, you get to start beating yourself up all over again."

There's enough understanding in Selvig's voice that it nearly breaks Clint, his throat closing so tight that it's an effort to swallow. He drops his head to his chest, breathing as slowly and evenly as he can, not letting it catch and tip him over the edge. In any sense, he thinks with a choked off laugh as he stares down at the ground, fifteen feet below. He'd survive the fall, but Natasha would kill him.

She's looking up at him again, her face seemingly expressionless, on the faint line on her forehead showing her worry. When she catches him looking, she turns away, cheeks flushing and he frowns. Except, of course she's thinking the same as him. She's listening for the familiar voice, the reassuring instruction. And she'd been the one who'd had to tell him. He looks away as well.

"She's trying to help," Selvig says, not unkindly. "Jane's the same. And you try to remember that they're grieving as well, but then you remember why." He sighs. "I'm really wishing Thor had stuck around a bit longer right about now. He's a helluva drinking buddy."

That makes Clint smile, just a little. "I'll bet," he says. "I'm not him, but I'll give it a go if you're up to it." Never mind what he told Natasha before. If ever a couple of guys needed to go and get well and truly hammered, it's him and Selvig. When Selvig gives him a 'why not' tip of the head, Clint grins. Then he twists, grabbing the edge of the roof as he falls and swinging his body back and forth, enough to slow his fall so he can drop to the ground and roll away safely. He looks back up at Selvig, who is shaking his head.

"I'll be with you in a minute," he says.

Clint leans back against one of the SUVs and turns his face to the sun again. "I can wait," he says, and settles back to do just that.

 

~

_** Budapest, Hungary ** _

It took ten minutes of arguing, but Clint eventually convinced Coulson to change into something more suitable for caving and to get in the car. In truth, he'd expected it to take longer, but really, it was their best choice and they both knew it. If Natasha wasn't answering her phone, then she couldn't answer her phone. It was that simple.

"How many ways in are there?" Coulson asked, checking his clip again.

"At least four. Only three of the caves are tourist sites. This one's supposed to be closed to protect the rock formations." Having got up close and personal with some of the smaller passageways, Clint could report that the rocks were more than capable of looking after themselves. "Once you get past the first hundred meters or so, it really opens out. Huge caverns, lots of space."

"Lots of room to hide."

"That's about the size of it."

"So we've got a compromised agent, who may or may not be in control of her own mind, probably being held prisoner by a group of arms smugglers who may or may not have access to alien weapons technology, in a cave network the size of what? A large hill?"

"You see, sir, this is why you write the reports. You're much better at summing these things up than I am." Clint pulled onto one of the smaller roads, killing the main lights and driving more slowly. He remembered the route, and the sidelights made sure he wouldn't actually hit anything, even if he wasn't exactly in the calmest state of mind for this sort of thing right now.

Coulson was all business, and for a Suit, Clint knew he was fairly handy in a firefight. Not that a couple of dozen armed SWAT officers wouldn't have been handier, but he'd work with what he had.

"How many men?" Coulson asked.

"About a dozen that I've seen. But it's hard to count them when you don't know whether or not they're real."

There was a sigh from the other side of the car. "This is going to be a really tricky operation, isn't it?"

Despite everything, Clint found himself grinning. "They're the only kind worth doing." He pulled up on the side of the road, turning off the engine and the lights. "We're about a five minute walk and ten minute climb away. You ready?"

For answer, Coulson got out of the car, putting the gun into its holster at his waist. There was another one at his ankle, a couple of spare clips in his pockets and a rope looped over his arm. In the darkness, Clint couldn't make out his face, only the set of his shoulders and the determined length of his strides as he started up the hill.

"This is a really bad idea," he said, as Clint fell into step beside him.

"Yup."

"She's probably not even in there, and will have both our scalps when she eventually rescues herself, and then no doubt us as well."

"Probably."

"And it would be much better to call in for back up and wait for a proper team to arrive."

"Definitely."

"So remind me again why I'm about to go on an impromptu and ill-advised pot-holing trip with you, Barton?"

"Because you're pretty sure she'll do the same for us as soon as she has the chance, sir. And it's caving, not pot-holing."

"I'm so glad you're here to tell me these things."

~

In the end, they encountered little enough resistance at the mouth of the cave system. After a brief, whispered argument which Coulson had finally won by pulling rank, they took one of the larger entrances, which the arms dealers were also using. That meant taking out the sentries, which meant that if anyone came looking for them, or even just radioed them, Clint and Coulson's cover would be blown. But it did mean they'd have a quicker route in, and the guards clearly weren't really expecting trouble if their lit cigarettes were anything to go by.

The tiny points of light really did make the shots ridiculously easy, and Clint stood guard himself for a few minutes while Coulson dragged the bodies out of sight. A light touch on his shoulder told Clint that they were ready to go, and he closed his eyes before turning, opening them into the darkness that now didn't seem quite so complete. There was a faint glow up ahead, and he tapped his pocket, reminding himself where his sunglasses were stowed as he slowly followed Coulson inside.

It was quiet for the first couple of turns, both of them fitting into the smaller side passages as men carrying suspiciously large boxes hurried past. The third time they were forced to take cover, Coulson leaned over so he could speak directly into Clint's ear.

"They look like they're on the move."

Clint nodded, glancing after them. If they had Natasha, and if she'd told them that SHIELD was onto them, then this place could be cleared out by the end of the day. He closed his eyes, replaying their route and comparing it to the one he'd been using. Nudging Coulson, he turned his head to speak in an equally low voice.

"We've got another hundred meters or so before the main cavern. These guys are going in the wrong direction."

It was definitely an evacuation.

"Well, damn," Coulson breathed, shaking his head. "We'll have to pick them up later. Let's concentrate on getting Romanoff and getting out in one piece, shall we?"

Together, they moved out of their cover, treading silently on the loose rocks that littered the floors of the passageways. About two minutes along the way, Clint felt the change in the air, the movement that meant they were getting towards a different sort of space. Coulson must have felt it too, because he slowed down, keeping closer to the side of the passage.

"Ready?" Clint asked, getting a better grip on his bow.

In front of him, Coulson nodded, lifting his gun. He glanced back, then turned forwards again, dropping his head more deliberately this time in, and Clint counted along with him.

Three. Two. One.

They stepped around the corner.

 

~

_** Stark Tower, NYC ** _

In the two weeks since they were last in New York, it seems that everything has changed. Most of the rubble has been cleared off the street, buildings near the tower are under scaffolding, and the ones that aren't are cordoned off, clearly awaiting their turn. The tower itself is mostly intact until about two thirds of the way up, and even then, most of the damage seems to be in the form of broken windows. Clint supposed that if Loki planned to rule the world from it, he'd have wanted it in one piece.

There are still huge dents in the penthouse floor, though, deep enough that Clint sinks into one up to his knee. It's different, seeing it like this, and having to imagine Loki sitting here, glowering at them as he waited for his punishment. It's even more different from seeing him in surrender, kneeling over him with bow drawn, the sudden urge to make good on his threat only held back by the people around him.

Clint had wanted to be a hero. Now, he's wondering if he should have just taken that shot.

He wanders over to the table by the window, looking down again, comparing the damage then to the extent of the repairs now. There's still a long way to go until New York is back in one piece, but at least the dust is gone from the tower. It's overcast today, the occasional rain shower keeping things damp and deadened.

Turning at the sound of footsteps, he nods to Doctor Banner, who stops on seeing him there.

"Sorry," he says, looking around. "JARVIS said there was someone up here. I didn't realise it was you. Some of the workmen get lost sometimes." The way he says it suggests that 'lost' is a polite word for 'hanging out, doing nothing', which is pretty much what Clint is doing, so he doesn't mention it.

"I just wanted to see," he says, turning back to the window. "Looks like things are getting back under control."

"As much as New York is ever under control, yes." Banner has his hands in his pockets as he comes to join Clint. "Did you have a good trip?"

"We got Doctor Foster and her stuff here in one piece. She's setting up downstairs, if you want to see her."

Banner waves the suggestion away. "I'll catch up with her later. Tony's asked me to keep an eye on things here for a while." Seeing Clint's frown, he shrugs. "He and Pepper had to go back to Malibu, something to do with the company. I'm sure they'll be back for a visit soon, but you know how it is. California's home for them."

Clint has quarters on the Helicarrier, and a storage lock-up in Newark that he never visits. Home is somewhere safe to keep his bow until the next mission. Not that he doesn't understand the impulse. It just doesn't really apply to him.

"Is Agent Romanoff with you?" Banner asks, apparently undeterred by Clint's silence.

"Downstairs somewhere, I think."

"Okay." He hesitates, then adds, "I heard about Agent Coulson afterwards, and I didn't get the chance to say how sorry I was. I know the three of you were close."

"For a long time." Clint doesn't look around. "I keep thinking that if he were here, he'd have the clean-up teams organised in half the time, and would be staring down Stark until he invented a better earth mover."

"Sounds like a good man."

"He was." The words aren't more than a whisper. It's strange, but Clint doesn't feel the need to hide that, not here, not with Banner. He's the first person to say it like that, as though Clint has a legitimate right to mourn, and it's not strange that he's doing so. It's oddly freeing.

Rocking back and forth on his heels a little, Banner makes a very unconvincing noise that is probably supposed to sound as though he's just remembered something. "Oh, by the way," he says, with equally unconvincing nonchalance, "Tony said you're welcome to stay here while you're in New York. Most of the rooms on the south side are intact, and it's not like we don't have the space."

That catches Clint's attention. "We?"

"Well." Banner flushes a little, looking away. "He's sort of left me in charge. I think. People keep asking me questions, and he's never around when they need answers, so I'm just making it up as I go along really." He smiles, a little sheepishly. "Hope they like it when they get back."

"But tough if they don't?" A little reluctantly, Clint smiles. "Sounds like you're settling down, Doctor."

"Bruce, please. And I guess so. For the moment at least." He shrugs. "Everyone's got to be somewhere."

They watch the city for a while longer, seeing people scurrying for cover as the rain gets heavier, the works vehicles keeping going even as their crews are soaked. After another couple of minutes, Clint makes himself turn away, going back to the holes in the floor.

"The repair crews not get up here yet?" he asks, crouching to run his hand over the broken tiles of the floor.

"Not exactly. Tony said he wants to do this part himself. Maybe remodel the whole floor. I don't know." Bruce has followed Clint, standing just behind him. "He still hasn't really told me what happened up here, with him and Loki, I mean. It spooked him, I think."

Clint picks up one of the pieces of tile, turning it slowly. "Do you remember what happened?" he asks, knowing that Banner hates to talk about this, but needing to know anyway. "With you and Loki."

"It was the other guy," Banner says, and Clint thinks that more of an automatic reply now, the words ringing a little hollow. He looks up to see Banner staring into the distance, his eyes unfocussed. "And not really. I get flashes from time to time. Memories that aren't mine, and must be his. It's not very clear."

"But you beat him," Clint says. He drops the tile into one of the holes and straightens up, meeting Banner's eyes. "You know that, right?"

When Banner opens his mouth, Clint is pretty sure it's to deny having anything to do with it. He must see something in Clint's expression, though, because he closes his mouth and looks away again. "I know some of it."

Would it be worse or better not to remember any of it, to know that he'd done everything, and to not remember it? The memory of Loki's mind in his is bad enough. To look back and only find gaps? That might just be worse.

He shakes his head. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"

"No, it's fine-"

"I don't want you to have to-"

"I don't mind-"

They both stop, Banner's rueful smile back in place, and this time it's Clint who jams his hands into his pockets. "We can't stay long," he says. "They're expecting us back on the Helicarrier tomorrow."

"I understand. That means you've got tonight, though, right? Why don't you and Natasha have dinner here? We'll bring Jane and Darcy and Eric, make a party of it."

It takes Clint a moment to remember that this is Bruce Banner, the man who's spent years running away from everyone, who's avoided getting too close, just in case. He's read the SHIELD file, watched Banner hop from continent to continent, staying a few months here and there, making sure he never put down roots. And he looks at the man in front of him, calm and smiling and giving Clint an expectant look.

Clint shakes his head. "Party? Stark's a bad influence on you, Doctor Banner."

That makes Banner laugh. "Maybe. Let's just have dinner. Most scientists are terrible at parties anyway. They start talking about their work, and the next thing you know, there's equations all over the table cloth. Or you scrawl a life-changing formula on a napkin, and someone uses it to mop up their champagne."

"Dinner sounds good." Gesturing, Clint lets Banner lead the way, and when they get to the doorway, he doesn't look back.

 

~

_** Budapest, Hungary ** _

After all the anticipation, Clint thought he was ready to meet just about anything as he stepped around the corner into the main cavern.

"Okay," he said, lowering his bow a little. "This, I did not expect."

The entire cave ceiling opposite had come down, boulders the size of cars blocking the way. Even if he could scramble up them, which was doubtful, it didn't look like there was going to be any way past. He resisted the urge to swear under his breath, and turned to Coulson just in time to have his arm grabbed, the other man dragging him into the wall.

"Get down," he said, and lifted his gun.

And honestly, Clint was going to smack himself on the forehead later, and possible demote himself, because he was officially too stupid to be a SHIELD agent. On the other hand, so was Coulson.

Clint brought his bow up quickly and sharply enough into Coulson's wrist to make him drop the gun before he could fire, catching it as it fell.

"Remember where we are," he said in a low voice which still seemed to echo crazily off the walls. Bending down, he scooped up a stone, throwing it towards the rock wall as Coulson rubbed a hand over his eyes. As Clint watched, the stone seemed to bounce off the nearest boulder. But what he heard was the stone passing through the apparent wall, falling to the ground behind it.

Coulson blinked. "Okay," he said slowly, holding out his hand. "That's a lot more real than I thought." His fingers twitched impatiently, and Clint pressed the gun into them.

"I did tell you it was convincing." He slipped his sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. The wall didn't disappear, and it was a lot harder to see now. Still, he thought he could see something beyond the boulders, like two photographs on top of each other, the images blurring together. "What do you see?"

"Apparently I really, really don't want to be shot," Coulson said, his voice tight. "Assuming this thing shows you whatever you don't want to see."

"I don't think it's quite that simple," Clint said, only half-listening. "And it's gotten better since we've been here. Maybe they've learned how to use it."

"Can you see a way through?" Coulson's free hand came to rest on Clint's shoulder, squeezing a little.

"I think so."

They moved slowly, Coulson checking behind them, and Clint squinting to make sure they weren't just going to walk into the rockface. He hesitated as they got to the point where the illusion of the wall was, because it still looked so real and solid, even if he could see the passage beyond it now.

"It's not there," Coulson said, and the tone of his voice brooked no argument. It was far more real and grounding than the rocks in front of him, so Clint took a deep breath and stepped on through.

Once he'd broken the barrier, it seemed to wink out of existence around him, as though he'd confused it and it had given up. From the way Coulson's hand relaxed, he guessed that he wasn't the only one seeing things properly now. He slipped off his shades and gave Coulson a grin.

"Here's hoping things get easier from here."

The hand tightened again. "You had to say it, didn't you?" Coulson asked, letting go completely and putting both hands on his gun.

"Don't move."

Clint froze. Any sudden movement right now was more than likely to get him killed, if the tone of that voice was anything to go by. Slowly, he lifted his hands away from his body, bow still held in his right even as he spread the fingers of his left, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. He turned with equal care, keeping the motion smooth and steady.

In the mouth of the passageway, Natasha was standing with her feet braced, the gun unwavering as she held it out, pointing directly at him. At him, he noted, not Coulson. Interesting.

"Natasha," he started, and her shout caught him by surprise.

"Shut up! _Zalmochat_!"

Even more interesting. Turning just a fraction, Clint got Coulson's attention. "How's your Russian?" he muttered, taking half a step back as Natasha stepped out of the passage, her gun still rock-steady.

"Basic," Coulson said, drawing her attention to him. The gun stayed on Clint, though, and he started to get the idea, because that was a complete and utter lie.

Switching to Russian himself, he said, "That's not very helpful," and watched as Natasha's eyes, which were already wide and slightly glazed, turn almost manic. As she stepped into the better light of the cavern, he saw a flash of something at her throat. When Coulson stepped forwards, nodding a little, Clint knew that he'd seen it too.

"We're not your enemies," Coulson said, his Russian accent irritatingly better than Clint's. "Natasha..."

"Be quiet! I don't want to hear it." Her attention shifted at last, just a fraction, but it was enough.

Clint ducked, rolling forwards as Coulson dived to one side. Unable to follow them both, Natasha tried to bring her weapon back down towards Clint, using the gun as a club and missing his ear by millimeters. He came up quickly, barrelling into her and using his weight advantage to bear her to the ground, just as he'd done before. As they fell, he lifted his arm, only to have it knocked away, and they hit hard, knocking the breath out of them both. Natasha started to twist away, but his arm was locked around her, and she only managed to get halfway. It cost her precious maneuverability, and he pounced, grabbing the thing around her neck and pulling as hard as he could.

The scream was piercing, cutting through him and probably alerting everyone in the entire cave system. Even so, Clint heard Coulson swear from a few meters away, as Natasha went limp underneath him.

"Wonderful," Coulson muttered, coming over and dragging Clint to his feet. "Why didn't you just send up a flare while you were at it? We could have used the light."

"I didn't know she was going to do that." Hefting the thing in his hand for a moment, Clint felt the pull of it, the sensation that the world was swimming around him, and he dropped it hastily. "Damn."

There was a groan from the ground, and Clint looked at Coulson, who nodded. They took an arm each, lifting Natasha onto her feet and holding her up for a moment while she got her balance back.

"You with us?" Clint asked, brushing some of her hair out of her face with his free hand.

She peered groggily at him for a moment. "Clint?" As he eyes focused, her frown deepened. "What the hell?"

"Yeah, she's back."

Beside him, Natasha stirred, pulling her arm free of his grip. "I'm fine," she said, taking half a step away from him. She was wearing pants and some kind of halterneck top that was a little worse for wear with dust now, but she was standing upright without difficulty, and when he looked into her eyes, they were sharp and clear. "Sorry."

"Don't be." Coulson handed back the gun she'd been holding, pressing it into her hand when she hesitated. "Shoot anything that isn't us."

It was a good instruction, because a second later, Clint heard the sound of shouting from somewhere deeper in the caves. He glanced up. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked, notching an arrow.

"The sound of a couple dozen heavily armed men coming to see what the hell that noise was?" Coulson said, wrapping both hands his gun again. "You know what, I think it might be."

They turned as one at a sound from the opposite direction, back the way they'd come.

"And that would be even more of them," Natasha said, coolly checking her weapon and pushing the clip back into place. "At least they gave me a loaded gun."

"You're going to need it." Without even thinking, Clint turned and took a step backwards, pressing his back to hers. "I'm going to shoot anything I see," he said by way of explanation, shifting a little as Coulson copied him and the three of them stood back to back. "But since I don't know _what_ I'm going to see, probably better that it isn't either of you."

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he saw a flicker of movement at the entrance to the tunnel, and he let the arrow fly without a conscious thought, hearing as much as seeing it hit home. It was always best to take down the first man to make the others think again. He was expecting the shots, so didn't flinch when they started, following Natasha as she took a few slow paces towards the way out, the sound of her gun punctuating each step.

When the first man made it into the cavern, Clint had to bit back a yelp, firing his arrow instead,aiming for where he thought the man had to be. It wasn't easy, when what he was seeing was a giant alien, like something from the Roswell footage, and his first instinct was to go for the head. That wouldn't work, though, he knew it wouldn't work, and it was easier to remember that with Coulson's shoulder pressed to his, the smell of cordite in the air as the others kept up their fire. The men coming towards them were firing too, but he had the impression they were struggling with the alien tech as well, hitting the walls more than anything, which would have been more comforting if the ricochet in here wasn't potentially lethal.

He almost stumbled as Natasha turned a little, firing at something away to her left.

"Make sure it's real," he said, bracing himself against Coulson to take his next shot, and seeing a zombie fall to the ground. Assuming they got out of here, Clint was going to have to seriously rethink his movie choices.

A shout of pain from the direction Natasha had shot in told Clint that she'd hit her mark, and they moved a little faster, crossing the midpoint of the cavern. Tearing his eyes away from what seemed to be some kind of werewolf/polar bear hybrid, Clint ran his eyes over the ceiling.

"Okay," he said, shooting a dragon in the neck, "how are we doing back there?"

"I think they are persuaded that we mean to leave," Natasha said, only the touch of an accent in her words hinting at the strain. "I count four more." There was another shot. "Probably three."

"Barton," Coulson said, leaning back against Clint just a little. "I assume you're thinking of doing something extremely reckless."

"You know me too well, sir." That wasn't a no, though, and they both knew it. "But we need a few more feet first."

"Dammit," Natasha said, and Clint felt Coulson swing around towards her. "Reinforcements."

Clint fired an arrow at the werewolf, which had come a little too close for comfort, and glanced up again. "Three more feet," he said, pressing the control on his bow and feeling the quiver rotate behind him. The others must have felt it too, because the rate of fire doubled suddenly, and Natasha took a long enough step that Clint temporarily lost his contact with her.

Trying not to worry, and hoping like hell that the wretched machine got destroyed as well, Clint pulled the arrow out, drew the bow back and took aim at the ceiling. There was no way it would penetrate the solid rock, but he knew when it would hit, could feel the timing in his bones, and he turned towards Coulson and Natasha as it reached its mark, pushing them both hard as he hit the control to make the arrow explode.

Even being braced for it, the shockwave nearly knocked him off his feet, and he stumbled into Coulson, who was leaning on Natasha. The three of them hit the deck as rocks started to fall, and Clint groaned. "Next time I have a bright idea," he said, trying to get upright again, "someone talk me out it."

He ducked quickly as someone shot in his direction, and he hoped like it hell that hadn't been Natasha again. An answering shot told him it wasn't, and he looked around to find Coulson with his gun raised from his prone position on the floor. Natasha was a little further on, hunched against the wall, her gun pointed down the corridor. She didn't look around as she pushed herself back to her feet, firing twice, then throwing herself forwards, taking three more swift shots.

The next sound was the distinctive click of an empty gun, and he heard her curse in Russian. Coulson was already on his feet and hurrying over to her, passing her the gun from his ankle holster as he passed. Clint turned back to check that no one had made it out, then whistled softly.

"Oh yeah," he said, hunting for his shades again. "I'm good."

This time, when he put the sunglasses on, he really could only see a wall of rock, although the boulders were smaller this time, and less regular. There was a lot of dust in the air, coating his face and arms, and sticking to his tongue as he tried to take a few deep breaths. Still, it was easier to breathe through than a bullet.

There was another gunshot from behind him, and he turned quickly, pulling the glasses off and grabbing an arrow as he started to run.

~

As it turned out, that had been the last shot needed, Coulson taking out the final goon who hadn't had the good sense to run when the caves started coming down around him. The air outside felt wonderfully clean on Clint's face and fresh in his lungs, and he closed his eyes for a moment, drinking it in. When he opened them, he found Natasha looking at him, her knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them as she leaned back against a tree.

"Sorry," she said, turning away when he tilted his head. "I-"

"Don't worry, Romanoff. Most people who work with Barton try to shoot him at least once during a mission." Coulson was trying to seem as cool as ever, but his hair was full of dust and there was a trickle of blood running down the back of his hand. He dropped to the ground next to Natasha. "We like to think of it as a rite of passage. And at least you didn't actually fire."

"Careful, sir, You're giving her ideas." Clint sat down a little more carefully, stretching out his feet so they knocked against Natasha's ludicrously expensive high heels. "You really did all that in them? They are not paying you enough danger money."

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Still with her face turned away from them, she said, "I saw home." Her voice was hoarse, the words struggling to get out. "To do what I do. What I did. There's training. A lot of training. And they don't like it when you get it wrong."

Clint glanced at Coulson, and they silently agreed not to interrupt as Natasha hugged her knees closer.

"All the time, all you're trying to do is finish the training and get out, but when you do..." She gave a shrug that was more of a shiver. "That's what I saw. That's what I heard. They make you feel like your mind isn't your own, and they remake you into the person they want." Her mouth twisted into something closer to a grimace than a smile. "And that thing took it all and tried to remake it again."

"How much of what you remember is going to match what we remember?" Clint asked, twitching a finger when Coulson gave him a hard look.

It had the desired effect, pulling Natasha back into the present, her forehead creasing with the effort to remember. "Some. Everything outside the club. But in there?" She shook her head, looking at him properly at last. "While it was the last thing I wanted to remember, I have to admit, shooting them all in the head is not the worst memory I could have."

"Man, you get Russian secret agents, I just got refugees from a horror film. You are going to have way better stories to tell about this than me. How many people get to say they got to shoot their demons? I'm officially jealous." Clint grinned as Natasha's mouth twitched, satisfied for now. "What about you, Coulson? What did you see?"

"All the people I shot because they failed to fire a proper mission report, and who'd come back to haunt me." There was a faint smile on Coulson's face as he got to his feet. "We need to call this in, get it sealed off before anyone goes exploring in there." He set off down the hill towards the car, already pulling his cellphone from his pocket.

Clint watched him go, tapping his foot gently against Natasha's again. "Don't worry, I'll get him drunk later and find out."

"Really?" She turned, craning her neck to try to see where Coulson had gone. "That works?"

"Only if you spike his drink," Clint deadpanned, holding the serious look for all of ten seconds as she stared at him. It was a look that could melt steel, and he let his face fall back into a smile. "Well, okay, no, it's never actually worked. But it's fun trying."

"I'll bet."

Brushing at the dust on his arms, Clint made himself get up as well, offering a hand to Natasha while picking some of the smaller pebbles that seemed to have found their way into his pockets. She held onto it for a moment too long, making him look up at her face. In those ridiculous heels, they were more or less of a height, and her eyes seemed very large and luminous in the growing light.

"Clint," she started, and he shook his head.

"You don't have to," he said. "This whole thing is going to be hard enough to explain. I'm not even sure we all saw the same caves in there, let alone the people who tried to kill us."

"I'm not normally so easily fooled," she said, still gripping his hand. "It won't happen again."

"I know. Just think how much fun we're going to have arguing about this for years to come." He laced her arm through his, turning to follow Coulson down the hill. "It's going to be the best running joke ever, mostly because it's true, and no one will ever believe us." He sighed, making it sound happy just to make her smile again. "Whatever else happens, we'll always have Budapest."

She obviously realised she was missing something, because she frowned a little, and he waved it off. "Never mind," he said. "I'll explain it to you later."

"Later," she said, and gripped his arm a little tighter.

 

~

_** SHIELD Helicarrier ** _

 

"They retrieved the cell somewhere down the Eastern Seaboard," Natasha says, leaning on the railing. "Apparently it's mostly salvageable, but they don't think they're going to need it for a while."

Clint leans next to her, thinking of dinner the previous night, Banner and Foster trying to one-up each other with the nerdiest science jokes, while Darcy shook her head fondly.

"No," he says, "I don't think they will." Without thinking, he glances over to the wall, which is looking suspiciously clean.

Following his gaze, Natasha says, "If you just clean the one spot, you can still see where it was. I think the Director had them take the top layer of metal off."

"I can believe it." Fury wouldn't want this place becoming some kind of memorial. There's a gravestone in a cemetery somewhere for that, and despite everything, the Helicarrier is still for the living. "How many agents died in the attack?" he asks.

She must sense something is different about the question this time, even though he's been asking in different ways for the last week, and she's always dodged the question. "Thirty-four," she says softly. "Added to Loki's total before this, and then New York? There's a death toll of around three thousand."

"He wanted to rule the world," Clint says. "But what he really wanted to do was be better than his brother." He looks down into the spiral of joins that form the floor of the room, tracing the lines. "He said that Coulson begged at the end. Stark said not, but-" Shaking his head, he glances from the wall to the floor and back again. "This is Loki. He might have made him."

"He didn't." There's an absolute certainty in Natasha's voice that gives her away.

"You've watched the footage," he says.

She doesn't deny it, but she doesn't meet his eyes either. "Things aren't real unless you see them. I couldn't-" She breaks off, leaning hard on the railing and dropping her head. "I had to see it."

He understands, moving slowly along the rail until his shoulder is pressed to hers. "It made it real."

In front of her, her hands are clasped together so tightly that the knuckles are white. "I knew you'd want to know, and I couldn't be sure unless I saw it."

Reaching out, he covers her hands with one of his, wrapping the other around the railing to brace himself.

"Thank you," he says, and means it. He stares down for a moment longer, considering. Some of the worst of the anger bled away somewhere between getting blind drunk with Eric Selvig and having Bruce Banner serve him a second portion of ice cream. He thinks that maybe, after all, this is a world he can live in, even with the hollowness that will now be at its heart.

He swallows to clear his throat, and says, "I don't need to see it."

"No." It's only when her shoulder shakes against his that he realises she's crying, and he lets go of her hands to wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. Her head still down, she turns into him, resting her forehead against his shoulder and holding onto the front of his shirt.

He holds her, letting her cry at last, and presses his own face into her hair. He's not ready for this yet, but at least he can do this for her, knowing that when his time comes, she will do the same for him. So he plants his feet more steadily, braces himself against the rail, and holds her while she weeps.

In time, they will move on from here, to the next mission, the next crisis that needs the skills that only they have. But he knows, as he lifts his head to look at the wall again, that this is somewhere he will always come back to, and he thinks, as Natasha shifts against him, making herself more comfortable in his arms, he can live with that.


End file.
